


Cactus

by theheadandthekin



Series: Where You Destroy [2]
Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 16:32:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7322671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theheadandthekin/pseuds/theheadandthekin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One-shot, set during S3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cactus

**Author's Note:**

> I'm petty. For as long as I can sustain it, for every story posted here that erases Abbie, I'm posting two drabbles that don't.

Abbie Mills wasn't prone to sentimentality, nor to pitying inanimate objects, but the sad, stupid little cactus, all alone on an otherwise empty shelf by the check-out line pulled at her heartstrings.

Maybe it was just the work getting to her, the case files that were stacked, horror upon horror, on her desk--the kind of stuff that even intimate dealings with the supernatural couldn't prepare you for--but she bought the sad, stupid little cactus.

And when she got home, she put the sad, stupid little cactus in her laundry room, near the back door.

* * *

When he moved in, taking a futon in the back room rather than the guest bedroom upstairs ("for your privacy, Lieutenant"), Crane relocated the cactus to the bookshelf nearer where he slept.

He announced he would name it George.

He did it to make her laugh.

She did.

* * *

George was the only houseplant to survive her absence.

After her return, after Crane populated their house with succulents and declared them a "succulent family," Abbie stole the sad, stupid little cactus that didn't even grow from Crane's sleeping quarters and moved it to her bedside.

Months and months without anything green or living made her appreciate even the funny ball of spines.

Some mornings, she stared and stared at it, feeling a strange kinship to it. All other trauma aside, she was just _prickly,_ ready to make anyone or anything _bleed_ \--but it was only an adaptation, a way of existing, because she didn't want to be swallowed whole.

* * *

She awoke to a weight settling onto the edge of her bed.

"Ah. I was wondering where George went."

It honestly took her a second to register what the hell Crane was talking about.

"I'm sorry to wake you." He gently rested a hand on her hip, over the quilt. "But I wanted to make sure you were all right before I headed to the market."

Abbie closed her eyes again and inhaled deeply. There it was. Bruised ribs. Sprained ankle. Neck ache.

"Battered, but alive. You?"

"I am unhurt, although sleep was elusive."

She pulled her own hand out from between the sheets, muscles protesting at the new movement, and laced her fingers with his. He had dark scratches all over his wrists and forearms.

"You look like you were wrestling with that cactus."

Of course it hadn't been a cactus. It had been Pandora, all forked tongue and sharp claws.

"Abbie--" he started, then cut himself off. But the light mood had already turned.

"Crane. I won't let you let me go. Never again."

He didn't reply; he simply drew their linked hands to his lips.

Someday, she knew, her spines would soften and fall away. Not now, not today, not so soon after what happened and what she learned--her dad, Corbin, Danny, all of it--, but someday. She hoped he would be patient.

"You can take _George_ back downstairs." She tried to smile.

He pressed one more kiss to her knuckles before folding her hand back onto the quilt. "In due time."

"Crane." She wanted to know what he meant, which question he was answering.

But he wouldn't let her ask. "I'll remember to pick up strawberries."


End file.
